“Downtown is for people” wrote legendary urban planner Jane Jacobs in 1958, in response to building-centric redevelopment that was a byproduct of politics and economics seeking to rebuild cities across America. During her lifetime, she advocated for citizens to decide what end results they wanted, pioneering concepts like “social capital,” and advocating for planners to steer the rebuilding machinery to serve the community.

Yet, even today, downtown San Diego is being built as a collection of projects, with an approval process that consistently favors developers. When the downtown plan was adopted less than a decade ago under the leadership of then-President Nancy Graham, who was ousted amid ethics violations, many communities felt excluded. In particular, blue-collar workers that built and serviced the projects, neighborhoods surrounding downtown, and regional transit and open-space advocates, all felt shortchanged. They did not have resources to challenge the downtown plan, in the same way that industry groups had, to over-ride the community in the Barrio Logan plan, just south of downtown.

Today, the large-block redevelopment is back in full force. The older, affordable housing stock is being demolished, and replaced with luxury high-rises. Economic development agreements are benefiting projects that do not pay living wages to the workforce. And taxpayers across the city are subsiding the mitigation of environmental impacts of downtown projects.

The City Council has attempted several times during the past decade to hold CivicSD/CCDC accountable. Here are some examples of how the entity has rebuffed these efforts:

Poverty wages: The living wage ordinance approved by city of San Diego in 2005 required economic development agreements which provided subsidies of half a million dollars over a five-year period to pay low-wage service workers a living wage (currently $14.43 an hour). CivicSD/CCDC was exempted, and “encouraged to adopt its own living wage policy.” However, it remains the only city entity that does not require subsidy recipients to comply with the city’s living wage law.

Lack of construction career opportunities: The use of public funds typically requires construction workers to be paid prevailing wages, and participation by apprentices in the construction of a project. However, with the funneling of tax credits through a semi-autonomous nonprofit, and subsidiaries of that nonprofit, the application of prevailing wage law becomes subject to interpretation. CivicSD/CCDC does not require payment of prevailing wages nor for apprenticeship opportunities for the use of its own funds, unless required to do so by the city, state or federal government.

Lack of progress on City Council direction: In 2010, the City Council initiated a change in the downtown approval process to allow for the elected body to weigh in on large hotels over 200 rooms. CivicSD/CCDC has not made any progress on this directive for five years.

Amid public outcry, in order to give another chance for new leadership at CivicSD/CCDC, several councilmembers requested a community benefits policy earlier this year for projects that were publicly subsidized, with minimum standards on job quality, affordable housing and community amenities. However, resisting any attempts by the City Council to weigh in, CivicSD/CCDC adopted an unenforceable policy to let developers essentially get away with whatever they want.

Legal experts have cast serious doubt on the legality of the current arrangement, largely because the city has delegated land-use authority derived from the police power of the state to an unaccountable body. Therefore, state lawmakers led by Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez have sent to the Governor’s desk a law (Assembly Bill 504) that establishes oversight of elected officials over decisions of a planning nonprofit, such as CivicSD/CCDC.

This proposed law is carefully designed to only address the sort of major development projects that have outsized impact on the local community and economy, without interfering with the current process for ensuring simple, straightforward projects are able to gain approval and move forward quickly. The bill allows the approval of large projects over 25 thousand square feet, or 50 hotel rooms, or dwelling units, to be appealed to an elected body, such as the City Council. Councilmembers representing impacted neighborhoods, as well as many local groups focused on good government and community health and economic well-being have welcomed this opportunity to ensure the city is on sound legal footing and that the public is provided with a reasonable opportunity to have a voice on these decisions with the people they elected to represent their communities.

Downtown is for people. It is critical to ensure that regular working people have a voice through our elected representatives, in building downtown.

Editor Update: AB 504 to Improve Public Accountability for Local Development was approved by the Senate in a 23-11 vote on Wednesday September 9. The bill will now return to the Assembly for a concurrence vote.

Murtaza H. Baxamusa, Ph.D., AICP is a certified planner, writer and thinker. He develops affordable housing for the San Diego Building Trades Family Housing Corporation, and teaches urban planning at the University of Southern California (USC). He has over 12 years’ experience in economic development and sustainable urban planning, and has previously worked for the USC Center for Economic Development as well as the Center on Policy Initiatives. He has doctoral and master’s degrees in Planning from USC, and a bachelor’s degree with honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He serves on several nonprofit boards, including Civic San Diego, the San Diego City-County Reinvestment Taskforce and the Middle Class Taxpayers Association. He received the Ruby Award for Outstanding Advocate from the San Diego Housing Federation in 2012, as well as the John Lyons Memorial Fellowship, an honor that was read into the Congressional Record of the 112th Congress. The City of San Diego proclaimed June 17, 2008 to be “Dr. Murtaza H. Baxamusa Day” in recognition of his contributions to the city. He is a home-owner in Bay Park, and lives with his wife and two daughters.

Comments

Very misleading, biased article…most of the development happening downtown is replacing parking lots. And guess what that “luxury” development brings? Tax revenue. Much much more tax revenue than a surface level parking lot. Tax revenue funds programs for low income citizens and other needy people. Yes, developers make money when they develop things. But, believe it or not, that progress is good for the community.

The money being made by developers is clearly at issue. But it’s about other parties trying to get a bigger slice of that pie. It’s not about affordable housing being torn down. It’s about unions working to get more of the profits. And that’s fine. I would probably do the same thing. But let’s be honest about it…

The HUD Office of Inspector General Audit found that RDA/CCDC/Civic San Diego used $228 million in Federal HUD funds for the poor to build luxury condos in downtown. This is a fact that the City admitted on June 21, 2010 when a $78 million portion of the Repayment Agreement to CDBG Program Income was approved by the City Council.

Also RDA/CCDC/Civic San Diego allowed SRO and Affordable Housing mainly for seniors to be destroyed within the project area without paying for relocation if tenants. And instead made thousands of poor San Diegans Homeless. This was illegal. Sometime around 2011, they finally hired a relocation expert.

Funny how an article is declared “biased” when the person has few actual facts at hand. (Did you read the part about “Progressive Views” at the top of the page?) San Diego’s history of development includes so little in the way of taxes being diverted to programs for low income citizens that we’ve had a “housing emergency” declared by the city council every year for the past decade. The author of the story, by the way, sits on the board of Civic San Diego.

It’s an opinion piece favoring the passage of the Assembly Bill. It presents one side of the argument. So yes, by definition, it’s biased. I’m pro-development, so I’m biased, too. I think re-development of rundown areas is amazing for cities. The fact that the City has done a poor job of re-allocating tax revenue to the less fortunate is not the developers fault.

I think it’s misleading because the article makes it sound like developers are knocking down a bunch of housing in order to build structures for the rich. I’m commenting on a website, not writing an opposition paper, so I’m not going to compile a bunch of facts. But I bet you’ll find that most structures recently built, or currently being built, downtown are replacing parking lots.

The fact that the article is writtin by a Civic SD boardmember seems like a shocking conflict of interest. The Bill establishes the ability to appeal a project to City Council. Appeal = project blocking. It provides excellent leverage for negotiating. That’s the purpose of the proposed Bill…in my opinion.

Who could be against urban renewal or redevelopment, or happiness for that matter? While the theory of redevelopment sounds nice, a 75 year national track record paints a much less rosy picture. The article cites Jane Jacobs, probably the most respected writer on urban planning theory in the history of the subject. She explains with great insight and detail the flaws in redevelopment (and she wrote 55 years ago). As for San Diego’s experience, most of what is credited to redevelopment took place during a massive credit-fueled national building boom and widespread national migration back toward urban centers. While our redevelopment has done some good things, the overall picture is less clear. Even then, the number of new buildings has been similar to the number demolitions for surface parking or weed grown lots. As for the author having a conflict of interest, if anything, his writing is against the “interest” you cite.

Mark,there are a whole lot of people out here who’ve watched dollars flow to campaigns in torrents followed by pro-development decisions by those officials the dollars elected. Mark, you’re obviously not naive, so you ought to consider that you have to do better than suggest that the marketplace has taken care of elderly residents who can’t afford to live in this paradise any longer, and young people who can’t afford the rents because they can’t find living wages. The marketplace may be taking care of you, but you’re going to have to argue more effectively against us lefties if you want to win more good deals for the people you work for. We’ve had enough bullshit to fertilize forever all the parklets your East Pillage towers want to point to as ‘public amenities.’

Great informative article Mr. Baxamusa, I hope to hear more from you. It’s refreshing to know someone is on the board of CivicSD that realizes its lack of oversight is a real problem, and that something is being done about it.

Here’s a fact for Mr. Mark: Conflict of Interest, “A term used to describe the situation in which a public official or fiduciary who, contrary to the obligation and absolute duty to act for the benefit of the public or a designated individual, exploits the relationship for personal benefit, typically pecuniary”. Mr. Baxamusa’s article shows the OPPOSITE of a conflict of interest. I guess if you don’t understand this then it’s easy to miss the point of the article!